Dorkington Posted March 6, 2014 Posted March 6, 2014 I know in the NBA, you can spend more than the cap, but then you are penalized.... what about the NFL? It just kind of hit me that there's no teams in the NFL that really buy their way to the playoffs/championship consistently, like the Lakers do in the NBA, or the Yankees do in MLB. So does that mean the NFL has a hard cap? (Yes, I know the Bills will never spend that much, just wondering why teams like the Cowboys aren't constantly rolling over teams with all star players)
thebandit27 Posted March 6, 2014 Posted March 6, 2014 Yes, the NFL is a hard cap. You cannot circumvent the cap lest you are fined and (possibly) docked draft picks. The NFL will not process a transaction that puts a team over the cap.
Cash Posted March 6, 2014 Posted March 6, 2014 Yes and no. The NFL is technically a soft cap, but it's pretty close to hard. (Get your mind out of the gutter.) The total "cap figure" of everyone on the roster can't exceed the salary cap, but cap figures don't equal payroll, at least not in the short term. Bonus money is amortized over the length of a contract, yada yada yada. The short version is that it's easy to spend WAY over the cap in actual cash payouts in any given year, but eventually the accounting will catch up to you and you'll have to cut guys or restructure contracts. And the window in which you can get away with it is usually fairly short -- maybe 2-3 years at the most.
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